Trump Just Got the Supreme Court to Do Project 2025 for Him

Supreme Court Overrules Humphrey’s Executor, Allowing At-Will Removal of Most Independent Agency Heads

On Monday, the Supreme Court issued a 6–3 decision overruling Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, the 1935 precedent that had protected the heads of many independent agencies from removal by the president except for cause. In the same session, the court issued a 5–4 ruling in a companion case that preserved statutory protections for members of the Federal Reserve Board, allowing Lisa Cook to retain her position.

The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, held that for-cause removal provisions for agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission violate the separation of powers. The court concluded that the FTC exercises executive power and that officers wielding such power must be removable by the president. It described the 1935 Humphrey’s Executor characterization of the FTC’s functions as quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial as “a result in search of a rationale.” The decision drew on historical references to the Decision of 1789 and subsequent removal cases to support the view that the Constitution places executive power in a single president who must be able to supervise those who execute the law.

The court applied the same reasoning to ratify earlier emergency-docket orders from May 2025. Those orders had permitted the removal of Gwynne Wilcox from the National Labor Relations Board and Cathy Harris from the Merit Systems Protection Board without the notice and hearing procedures specified in their governing statutes. Both boards lost quorums and suspended operations. The Merit Systems Protection Board reported 20,335 pending appeals that year, a fourfold increase over typical volume, stemming from terminations of federal employees.

In the Federal Reserve case, the 5–4 majority—comprising Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and the three dissenting justices from the FTC case—declined to permit Cook’s removal. The immediate basis was procedural: the attempted removal occurred three days after a social media allegation of mortgage fraud and did not follow the statutory requirements for notice and opportunity to respond. The opinion further held that the Federal Reserve’s independence is consistent with constitutional tradition, citing the founding-era examples of the First and Second Banks of the United States and the historical practice of insulating central banking functions from direct political control. The court stated that treating the Fed’s for-cause provision as equivalent to at-will employment would depart from that tradition.

The rulings affect multiple agencies whose statutes had contained for-cause removal language, including the NLRB, the Merit Systems Protection Board, the FTC, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Surface Transportation Board, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Agencies whose leadership can be changed at the president’s discretion remain in existence with their statutory mandates intact, but their leadership becomes directly accountable to the president for the exercise of executive functions.

Congress included for-cause protections in these statutes to insulate certain expert bodies from direct presidential control. In a dissent joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued that the majority had disregarded the statutory text and the congressional design reflected in those provisions. Justice Kagan had previously dissented from the May 2025 emergency orders on similar grounds.

The decisions leave the Federal Reserve Board as the principal exception to the new removal rule. All other agencies previously covered by Humphrey’s Executor are now subject to presidential removal of their heads without cause. The statutes establishing the agencies remain unchanged; what has changed is the legal status of their removal protections.